ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● JESSE FEWELL
NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. Every two weeks we like to come together and talk about what matters to you, whether you’re a seasoned veteran in project management or a newcomer to the field. It’s a chance to take a step back and try to get a fresh and objective look at the state of the industry and our role in it.
I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are two guys who always seem to be playing an ever-expanding role in project management, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. And Andy, it looks like you’re going to be able to put on your nerd hat today.
ANDY CROWE: We’ve got a good ’cast today. You know, I’m excited to have Jesse on the podcast, and also it surprises me that we’ve gone this far and not had him on.
BILL YATES: That’s true.
ANDY CROWE: So it’s long overdue.
BILL YATES: Yup.
NICK WALKER: Jesse Fewell is an author, he’s a coach, and a trainer in the domain of innovation, collaboration, and agility. He’s the founder of VirtuallyAgile.com and has been instrumental in helping project teams all over the world succeed and improve their results. He also founded the original PMI Agile Community of Practice, co-created the PMI ACP Agile Certification, and co-authored the Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide. Jesse is the world’s only certified project management professional to hold the expert-level designations of Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Collaboration Instructor. He’s the author of “Can You Hear Me Now: Working With Global, Distributed, Virtual Teams.” Jesse, welcome to Manage This.
JESSE FEWELL: Man, I want to meet that guy.
NICK WALKER: Oh, yeah. Impressive résumé there. But I love a quotation from your website. It says, “Everywhere I go” – this is what you say. “Everywhere I go, I see breakdowns and breakthroughs, idiocy and innovation, pain and promise. I believe,” you say, “the difference between the two is leadership and whether our managers actually do it well.”
All right. That might sound simple; but, if it were, I doubt if you would have to devote a career to it.
JESSE FEWELL: Yeah. I say those things because it reflects what for me was a pivot point in my career, which was switching from being an individual contributor on a technology team to moving into project management. And it was a critical moment where exactly what you just happened, that there were some stupid things and some amazing things. And then I realized I could be the greatest engineer in the world, and our projects were still going to fail because of leadership issues. And so I traded my T-shirt, my programmer’s T-shirt collection for the project manager’s blazer and never looked back because I figured that’s how I could have an impact and just amplify results, rather than – no matter how good I was as a contributor.
NICK WALKER: It’s more than a wardrobe change, though, I guess. Was that transition difficult?
JESSE FEWELL: Well, I guess perhaps I’ve always been – and I think, Andy and Bill, you guys can relate to this – I’ve always been the achiever mode kind of person. And maybe perhaps project managers are drawn to the role because of that. And so when I made the switch, I read every book there was. And I started having one-on-ones with my team. I started setting smart goals. And I was just like, I was a little Energizer Bunny, like I’m going to be the best manager ever. Watch.
ANDY CROWE: You were that guy.
JESSE FEWELL: Yeah. So the transition was difficult only with respect to that, as somebody that had not yet been beaten down and embittered, I was moving a little bit too fast for a lot of the people around me.
ANDY CROWE: Jesse, when I first started – to kind of date myself because I think I’m probably a few years your senior. But when I first started, Blanchard’s “The One Minute Manager” was the only one of those books in pu...
